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5.29.2006

office talk

Two work-related thoughts.

It's weird to work at a place where people don't talk about baseball - and stranger still, a place where people don't associate me with talking about baseball. In all my former workplaces, whether I was teaching, word-processing or proofreading, co-workers would always ask me about the Yankees. At my last workplace - where I worked by myself all weekend, listening to the game if there was one - people would always stop in to check on the score, ask about players, who was coming off the DL and whatnot.

People do follow baseball in Toronto, but not as much, and I imagine not during Stanley Cup playoffs. On one of my first days temping here, I overheard some guys talking about the World Baseball Classic, but they were too far away for me to join in.

* * * *

Co-workers here always ask me where I worked last, meaning what law firm. When I tell them this is my first job in Toronto, that I previously worked in New York City, they always express surprise.

Most of them have visited New York on holiday, some have been several times, and they all - universally, it seems - have loved it. (I love that!) Also universally, they marvel at why I would have left there for here. Most of them say something like, "Why would you move from New York to... boredom?" Or "to this sleepy little town"?

I usually say that I also love New York, and if I could have found a way to have taken it with me, I would have. But alas, New York is still part of the United States, so I had to leave it behind - because I wanted to live in Canada. They like that as much as I like hearing how they loved New York.

11 comments:

Do you ever listen to The Vinyl Cafe? There was a great one this weekend with Stuart MacLean doing a spoken bio (with suport of the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra conducted by Mario Bernardi) of hockey organist/composer Eddie Kovacs that really gave an insider's glimpse of the depth of hockey culture in Canada. Like you're discovering with baseball culture, it's so ingrained/so much part of the national psyche that it defies logic. ANd that's probably a good thing. :)

Here's a question that occurs to me from time to time when I encounter women baseball (hockey, football, etc. etc. etc.) fans... is your love of the passtime at all coloured by the fact that women are de facto barred from participation in the major leagues? I find myself somewhat bothered by it. One might be able to make a case for football, where the players are huge and women of sufficient stature scarce (hell, MEN of sufficient stature, for that matter), and perhaps hockey, though to a lesser extent. But I can see no real physical-limitations arguments that really wash where major league baseball is concerned. Why can't, why shouldn't, women have long ago joined the American and National leagues?

I would LOVE to see a woman break the gender barrier in major league baseball. There have been some women in the minors and at least one in the Negro Leagues, but of course those were rare exceptions.

I'm more concerned with seeing women's sports gain the status and recognition they deserve. A very good case can be made for segregating sports by gender. It's not an air-tight case, it can be argued, and certainly any woman who wants to compete among men should be able to - but women's sports are often very different from men's, based on the differences in muscle mass. (I personally think they're often better.)

If - as seems to be the case - most female athletes accept competing against and among women, then I want to see them do that to the absolute fullest extent possible.

So, I'd love to see it, I'm always on the lookout for possible changes that might bring on that day - but in the long run, no, it doesn't cloud my passion for the game.

Laura, you're too diplomatic to point out to your co-workers that they're tourists. Of course they're going to love being in a city that lives by tourism only a little less than Vanice. It's getting by day to day in one of the hardest cities in the world to live in that separates the adults from the children.

And one of the best things about tearing your heart out by leaving after putting in those dues for a decade or two is that you get to be a tourist.

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